Archive for October 2009

The English Defence League (EDL) protested in Manchester yesterday and once again the thugs from Unite Against Fascism (UAF) turned out to cause trouble.

As I’ve said previously, I have no interest in ethnic nationalism of the sort the EDL promote, but I get pretty pissed off when the fascist UAF get away with thuggery and are portrayed as “the good guys”. They’re nothing of the sort, they’re vicious, fascist thugs that would be a proscribed organisation if it wasn’t for the number of senior police offices and politicians that were amongst their ranks.

This protest saw 700 EDL supporters turn out – many more than previous protests and thanks in no small part to the UAF thugs who turn out to cause trouble every time the EDL have a protest. UAF had about 1,400 people – 2 UAF thugs for every EDL knuckle dragger.

But the fact that every time the UAF turn out to “counter protest” they always get violent hasn’t escaped the BBC who, for once, have been marginally critical of them. Could it be that the fascist UAF are falling out of favour with the lefty-loving BBC?

According to the BBC, the atmosphere was “quite nasty” and the UAF thugs were the ones that tried to break the police line to get at the EDL protesters.

It’s time the police cracked down on violent left wing extremist organisations like UAF. They use violence and intimidation to try and supress peoples’ constitutional right to protest. They attempt to bring every protest they disagree with to a premature end by getting violent, putting the public and police in danger. They violently attack anyone who disagrees with them and if that means attacking the police if they get in the way then they’re fair game to these violent fascists.

Off-message articles don’t last long on the BBC News website so here it is for prosperity:

More than 40 people have been arrested during two political demonstrations in Manchester city centre.

At least 2,000 people attended the protests, by the English Defence League (EDL) and members of Unite Against Fascism (UAF) on Saturday afternoon.

Witnesses said “ugly scenes” broke out between rival protestors and police.

Forty-eight people have been arrested, four among them were held on suspicion of affray. Most of the other arrests were for public order offences.

‘Nasty’ atmosphere

Other people were detained on suspicion of racially-aggravated offences or over possession of weapons or drugs.

A senior police officer said the day had “proved a challenge” for the force

Protesters were herded towards railways stations by police officers as the protests came to an end. Many of them were moved away from the city centre on buses.

One man suffered a head injury during the protests, but did not need hospital treatment, a police spokeswoman confirmed.

About 700 members from the EDL and 1,400 members from UAF were separated by a line of riot police, dogs and mounted police in Piccadilly Gardens.

Mat Trewern, from BBC Radio Manchester, said the atmosphere had turned “quite nasty” as the day progressed.

He said: “There had been some ugly scenes as protesters clashed with police, but it has started to calm down and the crowds are dispersing.

“At one point, earlier on, when it became extremely tense, members of the UAF tried to break the police line between the two groups, which in turn angered the EDL members.

More than 2,000 protesters were thought to have been in the city centre

“Trouble had started when 100 members of the EDL arrived at Piccadilly Gardens and they were immediately met with shouts of ‘racists’ and ‘off our streets’ by members of the UAF, who had already congregated at Piccadilly.”

He said the number of protesters from the UAF outnumbered those from the EDL by about two to one.

“The disruption in the city centre has been on a large scale, shoppers and businesses have been affected by the protests.”

Assistant Chief Constable Garry Shewan said the presence of so many protesters in the city had “proved a challenge” but that life in the city had gone on as normal.

He said the police reaction had been necessary in order to tackle “the few hell-bent on violent confrontation” and described some of those arrested as “agitators and trouble-makers”.

‘Violent confrontation’

He said: “I would like to thank all those people who came to Manchester today and protested peacefully for their patience and understanding.

“I’d also like to commend the vast majority for demonstrating in a peaceful manner.

Most of the arrests were for public order offences

“However, the history of protest has been marred, by those who came intent on violent confrontation.”

Greater Manchester Police confirmed a man, believed to be heading to the protest, had earlier been arrested in Birmingham on suspicion of distributing racially aggravated material.

Muslim leaders had renewed appeals for people to avoid the demonstrations.

Nanu Miah, a community leader from Oldham, said before the protests in Manchester: “We are not encouraging people to go, we don’t know who EDL is and what could happen.”

An EDL event in Birmingham in September led to counter-demonstrations and bricks being hurled at riot police. Up to 90 people were arrested.

We waved placards and held up a 12ft banner (with difficulty). Lots of motorists were stopping in the road to read them and quite a few were honking horns in support and giving us the thumbs up. The police didn’t seem too fussed at the cars stopping in the road – certainly less fussed than they were at the prospect of me having my mobile phone in the meeting or carrying some leaflets .

We heckled a few MPs as they drove in, mainly asking “can we have our country back please?”. Khalid Mahmood, a Liebour MP in Birmingham, was chauffeur driven to the event like the good socialist that he is.

Shropshire Tory MPs, Mark Pritchard and Philip Dunne, were there even though the Tories were supposed to be boycotting the regional grand committees. My MP, David Wright, was also there, sat in the back row on his own. Seven opposition MPs turned up (most, if not all, Tories) which enabled the meeting to go ahead. Without them the Liebour MPs wouldn’t have been quorate and the meeting would have fallen at the first hurdle like the East of England one did.

The questions were all pre-prepared, as were the answers. I left halfway through shouting “Home rule for England” and “English Parliament please” which the usher didn’t approve of and promptly ushered me out of the room. By the time I left they has done nothing more than read from scripts and have the occasional half-hearted jibe at the Tories.

The police wouldn’t allow me to take leaflets in the room but refused to tell me what law banned leaflets in a public meeting and they also made me turn off my phone but wouldn’t tell me what law banned mobile phones in a public meeting. An MP walked through the metal detector and set it off. Someone said “She’s an MP” so she was waved through. I said “She might have a knife or a gun” but was told “She’s an MP”. Bearing in mind the rampant lawlessness of MPs, they are statistically more likely to have been taking something into the room that they shouldn’t have been than I was so why weren’t the police doing their job of protecting the public? I had my son with me and I was under strict instructions not to get arrested so I didn’t create too much of a fuss but I’ll be making a complaint to the police about officers making up the law as they go along.

Easy way of saving NHS cash in England

With all the talk of cutting services at the Princess Royal Hospital, it is worth bearing in mind a few things. Firstly, the English NHS has been underspending for the last few years by a considerable amount.

Spending on the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish NHS has increased considerably. Secondly, the Welsh government refuses to pay the going rate to English hospitals for treating Welsh patients – something that costs the NHS in Shropshire approximately £2m per year.

Thirdly, the Welsh are terrible payers – Oswestry hospital threatened to refuse to treate patients from Powys earlier this year because they wouldn’t pay their bills. A hospital in Bristol actually went as far as cancelling surgery for Welsh patients this year for the same reason.

The Welsh get free prescriptions and free hospital car parking yet we in England still subsidise their health service thanks to the Barnett Formula.

Why do our MPs allow £20bn a year flow over the border to subsidise spending in the rest of the UK? Shropshire’s hospitals could raise well over £2m a year by charging Welsh health boards the amount for treating their patients and penalising for overdue payments.

Stuart Parr
Telford

Tonight they printed a reply from another reader …

Rules for English are unfair

I agree with Stuart Parr’s letter (Shropshire Star, October 2). We English are very unfairly treated under the Barnett formula to the advantage of the other countries in the so-called United Kingdom.

Over the last few years this has become the “dis-united kingdom”. He asks why our MPs allow this disparity and all I can do is point out again that our Government is heavily Scottish-dominated. The other countries in the UK all have their own assemblies, but not the English.

The Scottish-dominated government will not even stop the Scottish, Welsh and Ulster MPs from voting on English-only matters in Westminster.

All this is very unfair to the English and even Barnett has stated so, but with the majority of English MPs being Conservative our current government is not going to change anything,

We can only hope to achieve parity after the next election and have our own parliament, or better still get rid of the other money-wasting and expense claiming assemblies.

Graham Burns
Newport

Agree with every word right up until the second half of the last sentence.

If there is a known “feature” with the new version of WordPress that causes anything in the dashboard to generate internal server errors from an apparently random point in time that can be fixed by creating a one-line ini file in the wp-admin folder, why the bloody buggering hell doesn’t the WordPress install file create the damn file in the first place?

But kudos to my new host – Runtime UK – for the excellent service this morning when the error started. I got through to an English person just up the road, the call was answered in a couple of rings, the support person couldn’t give me an answer straight away so he promised to call me back. He called me back after about 20 minutes having determined that it wasn’t a server problem and had even gone on Google and researched the problem for me. Now that is what I call excellent service.

The regional grand committee for the east of England euroregion was a complete farce – hardly any MPs turned up to the meeting (not enough for a quorum so they couldn’t discuss anything on the agenda) and they spent 30 minutes of the 50 minute meeting debating whether to put the PA system on. The whole thing cost the taxpayer nearly £2m, the meeting in the West Midlands euroregion will also cost roughly the same amount.

This is El Gordo’s vision for the future governance of England but it’s certainly not mine. The protest will be at 6:30pm on Thursday the 8th of October at the Sandwell College campus in Smethwick.

The people of Ireland have been bullied, cheated and bribed into voting for the EU Constitution aka the Lisbon Treaty.

Despite yesterday’s referendum being on exactly the same Treaty already rejected this year in Ireland, the Irish have been conned into believing the “guarantees” they have been given that the Treaty will be changed are legally binding when they are nothing more than the crooked words of crooked eurofederalist politicians.

They have been threatened with isolation and losing the considerable subsidies they currently get from the European Empire if they voted no and been subjected to a massive propaganda campaign using both their own taxes and money from the European Empire.

This time, the “no” campaign was given less media coverage than the “yes” campaign after regulators in Ireland said that it was legal for broadcasters to be biased towards the Irish government’s campaign.

The only way Lisbon can be stopped now is if the Polish and Czech presidents can hold out on their ratification until the next general election in this country and hope that the Tories stick to their word and suspend ratification while they hold a referendum. However, the Polish president is unlikely to hold out for more than a few days and the Czech president is going to find it very difficult to hold out for 7 months, even with a legal challenge expected to last a few months. On top of all that, David Camoron is a fundamentally dishonest traitor who has repeatedly confirmed that he fully supports ever closer union.

The Lisbon Treaty is unlawful in this country as it binds future parliaments – something that is illegal under English law – but our corrupt, politicised judges will never stand up to their political masters. Camoron will be breathing a huge sigh of relief this afternoon that the Lisbon Treaty will most likely be ratified by the time of the next election and that he won’t have to pretend not to want it.

Once it is ratified, the Lisbon Treaty can’t be modified or repealed by our own parliament. The only way to rescind it will be to leave the EU and once the Lisbon Treaty is in force, leaving will require the unanimous agreement of our “partners” in the European Empire and a two year cooling off period. They will never agree so we will be in for a fight – perhaps even the threat of troops on our streets from the EU national army that Lisbon will create or the arrest of any politicians involved in leaving by the EU police force that Lisbon will create. But the only way we will ever be rid of these fascists is by voting UKIP – the only party that is committed to leaving the European Empire … with or without their permission.

Meanwhile, did you hear the one about the Frenchman, the Dutchman and the Irishman that had a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty …